We have our shooters, strategies, racing games, and apparently simulators. I was originally going to say it’s a whole new genre. This is a simulator of burning things in a fireplace. You purchase items from catalogs and get even more in-game currency for burning them. Most items have various effects, which become active either once you’ve put the item into the fireplace or once it’s caught fire. There are item combinations which you’re supposed to guess from the name of each particular combo. On several occasions I found myself trying out each available item with the one or two other ones I knew had to be in the combo. Looking back, all of them seem obvious. This game is amazing. It’s a perfectly executed brilliant idea, it has a kind-hearted sense of humor, it’s pure addicting fun! Oh, and do not burn the Free Hugs Coupon. Yes, you can redeem it later on.
Boy, was that a satisfyingly tough game! If SWAT 3 took me 28 hours to complete, SWAT 4 took whole 64 ! The controls are more convenient here, but it’s balanced out by the increase in difficulty. Save maybe for the first few, each mission takes as two-digit number of attempts to learn and to get the luck you need to pass it, as sometimes you will simply miss when trying to hit an enemy dead in your crosshairs or get shot seemingly out of nowhere and there is nothing you can do about it (the enemies are once again placed randomly each attempt). On second thought, I was trying for the elite scores, so it might actually be easier on lower difficulties (The expansion ups the difficulty even more - you can no longer afford to lose a single team member if you're hoping to get the elite score in those missions). Now, unlike the previous game, SWAT 4 doesn’t have any big overarching story across its missions. The missions themselves ARE given context, which is often more detailed than in SWAT 3, but recurring enemies and/or the continuation of the nuclear treaty saga could have given the game a much greater sense of purpose, without which it’s just a collection of well-designed missions. The expansion actually does include the titular Stetchkov Syndicate as recurring bad guys, but it barely amounts to anything. But even without a story SWAT 4 is a good game… which requires a special mod or manual tweaking of its files to run at a modern resolution.
To me F.E.A.R. is an example of the perfect first-person shooter. Its levels are very well designed and host many engaging combat encounters, it has first aid kits and actual health points as opposed to the annoying health regeneration system, and as you progress you find or pick up off dead enemies more and more powerful weapons without having to deal with the modern crafting/upgrading system, which I am definitely not a fan of. The weapons include your regular rifles/shotguns, 3 types of explosives, and a couple of futuristic guns. There are two main families of enemies (variations of the replica soldiers and Armacham security forces, mainly differentiated by their arms and armor) and more rare supernatural horrors. At times the ability to slow down time does make certain parts of the game easier, other times though it feels vital. I’d say the game is balanced around it and this mechanic makes things more fun and intense, not to mention that it’s actually a plausible explanation for why you were able to single-handedly take down a small army worth of soldiers. You can change the difficulty at any point in the pause menu, if it’s too easy or too hard. The story (a good part of which is told through the voice messages on phones and the information you learn from abandoned laptops) is good, but it’s not something you’d discuss at a family dinner. It’s important to note that the included expansion packs (Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate) are NOT canon. F.E.A.R. 2 and its DLC continue the story of the original F.E.A.R.
Invisible War has always been my favorite Deus Ex game. I like its gameplay – you go from one hub-type section to the next, completing missions for your faction of choice, or for all factions. Each objective has several ways of completing it: naturally, you can shoot everyone, you can sneak in, you can talk your way out of a lot of problems or solve them by hacking. Even when it comes to getting digital keys there’s very often more than one way of obtaining them. Invisible War has an interesting biomod system: for each slot you can choose between two “official” modifications and one “illegal” one, with the latter being more offensive and clearly intended for illegal and unethical activities. I love the universal ammo mechanic – that is an absolutely brilliant idea, one that I wish were used in more games. With it you can choose weapons appropriate for your combat situation and your playstyle without the additional difficulty of managing another whole set of resources. And it does have an in-game explanation of its workings. The factions are different in terms of their goals and you can switch your allegiances all the way up to the very end. When I was younger the Illuminati was the only reasonable choice, but nowdays I see the appeal of ApostleCorp’s ideas. Still, no one can predict what they would lead to long-term. All in all it’s a great game – give it a try!
I’d never played a “tactical” shooter before and it was a rather interesting experience. It’s very different from your usual first person shooters, where you’re an unkillable superhero who is always charging in the thick of combat, destroying armies after armies of enemy soldiers on your own. Here you can’t accomplish much by yourself and you have to think about how you use your teammates. The game is very punishing when it comes to your mistakes. The words of Hoffman from Saw 4 kept ringing in my ears throughout the entire game: “You know never to go through an unsecured door. Ever.” And yet time after time I did and had to start over. That’s right – one mistake and you’re dead. Well, two or three, if you’re lucky. There are no modern day shenanigans like regenerating health, but there aren’t any first aid kits either. Still it’s fine, as the difficulty IS fair and with trial and error you will eventually learn the mission and complete it, and it will feel rewarding when you do. By “learn” I mean “get the general idea of how to act in various situations in the given environment,” because the positioning of enemies and hostages is randomized every time. The story isn’t exactly complex, but it’s there and I guess is okay. For me it was tremendously overshadowed by the novelty of gameplay. There is no tutorial, but us, old-timers, know that you’re expected to read the manual. All the information you might need is there. You will have to install the Last Resort mod and dgVoodoo to run the game at a modern resolution and a proper framerate.
Gex the gecko, a TV addict burning through his inheritance, gets sucked into the Media Dimension by its evil overlord Rez, who wants him to be the mascot of his new network, whatever that enTAILs. And so, Gex has to fight his way through 5 different worlds to defeat that Rez and return home. The gameplay is… well, okay. The controls could be a bit more responsive, and certain platform hitboxes – a bit more generous (sometimes it feels like they’re narrower than the sprite). The keys can be remapped, if necessary (in the window menu). I found playing in windowed mode more comfortable, than in fullscreen. The only real downside is that even through it’s a pc game it lacks a save system. You have to rely on passwords, which don’t keep track of your score, flies, or lives – they only save your level progress. It’s not unusable, but it is frustrating and it makes the game harder as you will probably need all those extra lives to fight bosses and for late game platforming sections. Through if you really need them you can always replay any easy level and/or abuse the checkpoint system to grind as many lives as you want. Gex is a decent platformer. But I like the later 3D installments much better.
Gameplay-wise this game is near perfect. You have your weapons and spells which you gradually find throughout the game, you use them to fight. The spells can be upgraded with amplifiers (make sure to fully upgrade the Shield); the weapons, fortunately, lack this annoying now ubiquitous crafting/upgrading system. With the spells you will not see any pesky counters telling you how many amplifiers you’ve collected and missed. Certain enemies are weaker to certain weapons and spells – do experiment, it’s rewarding. The difficulty is adequate and puzzles aren’t too hard to figure out on your own. They levels are extremely well-designed, and in no way boring or even confusing, but somewhat too long. Too few events happen at too large intervals. It’s that the story is somewhat vague. It’s missing details (I WAS reading the journal notes, I still stand by that) but the general idea of what’s going on is clear. At the end of the day it's enjoyable and worth playing. You will need a special patch and dgVoodoo to run the game at a modern resolution.
